In some digital communication systems, multiple valid data inputs are at times received simultaneously. In such instances, the system may need to select only one of these data inputs and reject the others based on a preselected priority scheme. This situation has been previously managed by first encoding the valid inputs according to the priority scheme, and then using that encoded value as an input to a multiplexer. This technique is basically a two stage process, first obtaining the priority signal by encoding the received data inputs using the preselected priority scheme and then using that priority signal to select the data input having the highest priority.